Edith Wharton - Novella 01 (11 page)

 
          
*****

 
          
Someone
led him gently from the room; & he knew that he had seen the face of his
beloved for the last time on earth. The next morning word was brought him that
Georgie had passed very quietly with the dawn, “to where, beyond these voices,
there is Peace.”

 
          
  

 
          
Afterwards.

 
          
“—But who that has loved forgets?”
Old Song.

 
          
Five
years, fruitful in many a silent change, have passed since the life-chronicle
which filled these pages, closed with Georgie Breton’s peaceful death; fruitful
in so great changes, that before parting with the different persons who have
filled our story-world, it is tempting to take one last glance into their
altered lives & households, that we may carry away with us the memory, not
of what they were, but of what they are. The villa at Nice in which Lord Breton
& his young wife died has passed into other hands; but the story of the old
English Lord’s death, followed so soon & so tragically by that of the
beautiful milady, still clings to it, & marks it with a peculiar interest.
As for Mrs. Rivers, on her eldest daughter’s death she returned at once to the
seclusion of Holly Lodge, where she spends her time in tears & retirement,
overwhelmed by her crape trimmings, overwhelmed by the education of her
children, & by everything, poor lady, which comes in her way. A distant
cousin of the late Lord Breton’s (a grave married man with a large family) has
inherited his title & his estates; & there are three blooming,
marrigeable girls at Lowood; for whom the new Lord & Lady Breton are
continually giving croquet-parties, dinners & balls in the hope that the
eligible young men of the county may be attracted thither, & discover their
charms. Mr. and Mrs. Graham have come back to
England
too, & have bought a pretty, well-kept
little place not far from
London
, whose walls are adorned with many foreign works of art, collected
during their memorable tour on the continent. The honest couple live very
quietly, keeping occasional feast-days when the postman leaves at the door a
thick blue envelope with a foreign stamp; an envelope containing a pile of
close-written sheets beginning “Darling Mamma & Papa” & ending “Your
own loving daughter, Madeline.” And with what pride will they shew you a
photograph, which was enclosed in one of these very letters, of a little,
earnest, bright-eyed man of two or three, on the back of which a loving hand
has written “Baby’s picture.” One more English household calls our attention
before we wander back for the last time to Italian skies; a comfortable
London
house in a pleasant neighbourhood, near all
the clubs. Jack Egerton is established there; our Bohemian Jack, who has come
into a nice fortune in the course of these last years, & has also met with
a pale, melancholy, fascinating French Marquise, who so far disturbed his cherished
theories of misogynism, that a very quiet wedding was the result of their
intimacy, & who now presides with a tact, a grace, & a dignity of which
he may well be proud, at his friendly table. So we leave him; to turn once more
before parting, to a familiar, though now a changed scene—the old studio on the
third floor of the Roman palazzo, where in the old days, Hastings & Egerton
lounged & painted. A Signore Inglese has rented the whole floor now; &
that
Signore is Guy. The studio is essentially as it was;
but the glamour of a woman’s presence has cast the charm of order &
homelikeness over its picturesque chaos, & the light footsteps of a woman
cross & recross the floor as
Hastings
sit[s] at his easel in the sunshine. For,
as will have been divined, Guy has fulfilled Georgie’s latest prayer, & for
nearly five years Madeline Graham has been his wife. They spend their
Winters
always in
Rome
, for the sake at once of Madeline’s health
&
Hastings
’ art-studies; & there is a younger Guy
who is beginning to toddle across the studio floor to his father’s knee, guided
by a little, blushing velvet-eyed Italian Nurse whom he has been taught to call
Teresina
. Guy works harder than of old, & is on
a fair road to fame. He has not forgotten his old friend &
Mentor
, Egerton, but I doubt if he will ever
accept the constant invitations to
England
which kind-hearted Jack sends him. For
there are certain memories which time cannot kill, & change cannot efface.
So Madeline is happy in a sunny, peaceful household; in returning health, &
new & pleasant duties; in the most beautiful boy that mother ever sung to
sleep or woke with a laughing kiss; & in a husband, who is the soul of
grave courtesy & kindness. But Guy Hastings’ heart is under the violets on
Georgie’s grave.

 
          
The End